July 9, 2010

The diamond business has fascinated me ever since the 1980s when my future wife and I spent months shopping for diamonds because it is so different from the way companies I was familiar with, such as Procter & Gamble or Walmart, did business. (Even leaving aside the whole "Why not get a cubic zirconia?" question.) We finally kept going back to a guy with a tiny shop in Chicago's Loop who kept promising us that he was going to go to Antwerp and get us a really good deal. Finally, after a few weeks of not hearing from him, he called me up and told me he had the perfect stone. And he did.

"So, you got this in Antwerp?" I said. He looked at me like I was crazy. "I've never been to Antwerp in my life." Afterwards, I figured he'd probably bought it off a mugger.

The Belgian city of Antwerp has the largest diamond market in the world. Orthodox Jews controlled the trade for centuries, but now globalization has seen them displaced by dealers hailing from India.

When Jumi Hoffmann, co-owner of "Hoffi's Take Away" in Antwerp's Lange Kievit street, thinks of the future the Belgian city's Jewish community is facing, he doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. He's glad his town is home to the largest orthodox Jewish community in Europe, but he's also worried sick that most of his 20,000 brethren could be drifting into poverty.

"The Yiddish mensch is losing his bread," Hoffmann says. What he means is that Jewish traders have lost their central position in Antwerp's diamond business. They control only a quarter of the turnover made; it used to be 70 percent. ... Twenty years ago, some 30,000 orthodox Jews made a living polishing diamonds near the exchange in Hovenier street -- 10 times as many as there are today. ...

Agreements are sealed with a handshake, accompanied by an old religious well-wish: masl un broche -- happiness and blessing. The South Asians use the expression too. But Yiddish is slowly losing its status as the main language of the exchange. English does the job just as well.

The High Diamond Council, the trade's main governing body, has only recently caught up with the times. Earlier this month Indians won five of the six elected seats on the 11-member board. Indians already account for €15 billion ($19 billion) of the annual diamond trade of a total of €23 billion.

While competition between them is harsh, the Jews and the Indians -- most of them belonging to the Jain faith -- have a friendly, neighborlike relationship. There are even some Jewish-Indian married couples in Antwerp. "Judaism and our Jainisim have a number of similarities," diamond dealer Ramesh Mehta explains. Like Jews, he says followers of Jainism are used to working hard and they reject every form of violence.

More importantly, both Jews and Indians are used to thinking and acting globally. They also know that they can rely on one another. Far be it from an Indian trader to ask for a receipt when he gives a Jewish colleague a bag of jewels for safekeeping overnight.

Most Indian traders are from the Gujarat region, the center of the Indian diamond trade. They're modest people, who mostly are vegetarian. But when the occasion demands it, they have no problem putting their wealth on show.

Last year, diamond dealer Vijay Shah organized a combined marriage feast for his son and his daughter -- it would have been worthy of a royal family. Insiders estimate he spent €14 million on the bast. And the cricket games arranged every year by one of the large Indian families see each clan trying to outdo the others in terms of pomp and luxury.

But take a look at the Jewish quarter behind Antwerp's Central Station and you can tell it's seen better days. ...

Fear of militant Islam and of political shifts in the world of diamond trading has had a bizarre effect on Antwerp's political scene. A growing minority of Antwerp Jews sympathizes with Vlaams Belang (or Flemish Interest and formerly known as Vlaams Blok), the most successful extreme right-wing party in Europe, which has held the largest number of seats in the regional parliament of Flanders ever since the 2004 elections. Despite being pro-Flemish and xenophobic, Vlaams Belang presents itself as markedly pro-Israel and demands stronger action be taken against those Moroccan immigrants in Belgium who openly display their contempt for Jews. ...

Antwerp's Jewish community has fiercely defended its monopoly on the actual craftsmanship involved in the diamond trade. The most precious diamonds are still polished in traditional Jewish workshops. "The reason isn't that we have good connections, as many people say," claims Moshe Weiss, the doyen of the trade. "It's that we're better than everyone else." ...

Jahwery comes from the city of Palanpur in Gujarat, where his great grandfather still polished diamonds on a pedal-driven wheel. Many of the great diamond dealers of Antwerp have roots in Palanpur: the Mehtas, the Shahs, the Jahwerys. They came to Antwerp in the 1970s and 1980s, attracted by the enormous profits possible there, and also by Belgium's liberal immigration laws. Since diamond dealers tend to marry among each other, most of the 300 Indian families of Antwerp are related.

A business largely controlled by your own family is always far superior to competitors, Jahwery says.

The secret to the diamond business is arranged marriages and the threat of ostracism, as dawned on me while having the diamond ring appraised to make sure the retailer hadn't cheated me. The appraiser on Wabash spent about 20 minutes squinting at it through a microscope before telling me about its microscopic flaws.

That's a big transaction cost. It's much more efficient to be able to trust somebody you are doing business with when he tells you orally that the diamond is flawless. But how do you trust him? Because if he gets a reputation for cheating his relatives, his children will never find spouses.

The other diamond dealers from Gujarat would probably agree. They rely on their worldwide family networks to build and maintain headquarters on every continent. That's what distinguishes them from the Jewish businesses that used to dominate the market. The Indian clans are true global players.

If you grow up in, say, Pacific Palisades, you probably aren't as willing to head off for the next gold rush on the other side of the world as if you grew up in Gujarat. Pacific Palisades, where, say, Steven Spielberg lives, is kind of the end of the line. Spielberg is probably not going to dispatch his children to the far ends of the world like a 21st Century Mayer Rothschild to build his empire.

Ashwin Jahwery has branches in Taiwan, Thailand, China, Australia, Great Britain and Spain, all of them run by his nephews. His two sons are still studying at Antwerp University. One of them is studying business and the other diamond polishing. They already have positions waiting for them in their father's diamond trade empire.

And unlike the Jewish community, the Indians aren't sentimental about Antwerp. They lead a pleasant life there and earn well, but they could leave anytime.

A good businessman has to be flexible, Jahwery says -- and that flexibility has to be thought of in global terms. What he says amounts to a threat. "If the Belgian government creates problems for us," he says, "then Antwerp has no future as a business location. The things I need to get started somewhere else in the world fit inside two suitcases."

Some of his compatriots have already followed the call of one of the diamond trade's rising new locations and moved to Dubai. Diamond dealers in Antwerp feel harassed by a number of new regulations introduced by the Belgian government in order to combat the trade in so-called "blood diamonds." Antwerp not only has the largest regular market for diamonds in the world; it also has the largest black market. It's here that dictators and rebels sell the diamonds by which they finance their devastating civil wars.

The price of a diamond is determined on the basis of the four Cs: cut, color, clarity and carats. The High Diamond Council, which has also developed a code of conduct for its members, has added a fifth C: confidence.

It was a nice gesture, but it hasn't made a difference in practical terms. People at the jewelry shops near the Central Station don't ask for a certificate when someone offers them a bag of raw diamonds.

The High Council claims the problem is under control -- but that's wishful thinking, not a reality. There's no way to effectively control the import and export of diamonds -- for the simple reason that they're so small. And a pocketful of jewels is enough to allow an African warlord to buy enough Kalashnikovs for a whole army.

When Antwerp's diamond market was still controlled by Jewish families, the cartel relied on self-control. But those times are over.

This all raises questions about what Ibn Khaldun called asabiya. Do other Indians care about the welfare of Jains the way late 19th Century Reform Jews in Germany cared about Oriental and Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman Empire -- enough to start organizing pan-Jewish pressure groups? How much pan-Indian ethnonationalism is there among Indians? Or is India just too big?

And, in the future, how much ethnonationalism will there still be among Jews? To build Jewish national power in the late 19th Century, modernized Jews had to swallow their distaste for old-fashioned Jews for the good of ethnic solidarity. Can that pan-Jewish solidarity hold together when Jews are no longer the underdog? Obviously, a lot of money is currently being poured into that project (see below).

But, I was struck while reading Michael Chabon's 2007 alternative history bestseller, The Yiddish Policeman's Union, that the book is pretty dull until the villains in black hats are finally introduced. And the villains are literally in black hats: they're ultra-Orthodox men who wear black hats. The book takes wing when Chabon -- who is quite representative of mainstream modern American Jewish ethnocentric sentiments (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) -- gets to indulge his fine, fierce hatred of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Sure, there are a few pages about how much his Yiddish policemen heroes despise American Republican goyim, but Chabon's heroes really, really hate the black hats.

Chabon is a 21st Century Jew -- all that 20th Century Jewish teamplay might be falling apart.

175 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Edward Jay Epstein's book "The Diamond Invention," which is about the creation by the diamond cartel of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem, is available in its entirety here:

I liked the journalist's description of the "bizarre effect on Antwerp's political scene": Jews in Antwerp are supporting a party, Vlaams Belang, that "presents itself as markedly pro-Israel and demands stronger action be taken against those Moroccan immigrants in Belgium who openly display their contempt for Jews". Bizarre!

It's interesting that despite "harsh" direct competition for resources, these two distinct ethnies, the Jews and the Jains, "have a friendly, neighborlike relationship". Kevin MacDonald, if you're watching, can you explain this?

Pan-Indianism is a formidable concept because at the end of the day; India is both a secular, national, geographic, religious and spiritual concept.

Its a fusion of so many different elements and has such assimilative tendencies that "Indian" is a shorthand for anything South Asian (and beyond).

However the geography of India precludes it from being a great power and its diaspora tend to be assimilate & intermarry quite quickly; also the state of India has done an abysmal job of courting Diaspora Indians, almost has the same disdain for them that Israel shows to the Diaspora.

The Orthodox Jews are getting poorer because they have 5-10kids apiece.

This sentiment exists in Israel as well, but it lost major credibility when the Shinui party was given a 15-seat mandate in the early 2000's to do something serious about it, and failed miserably.Generally, Israelis feel that blackhats are parasitical, but not to the extent that they would vote for parties that would use this issue to subvert the nation towards a leftist direction with regards to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

This is markedly differet from the American political culture with its, to Israeli eyes, excessive focus on a myriad of "conservative" or "liberal" sub-issues - abortion, gun control, immigration, etc. (although of course the scale of the US immigration problem has become large enough that it should no longer be considered a sub-issue)

High street jewellery and diamond sales in the UK are largely through chains. These may be jewish owned, but they are largely staffed by regular white Brits. Not much sign of Indians in this trade at all, other than stores selling trashy, flashy Indian style stuff - to other Indians.

The best way I've found to get Jews to break their taboo on IQ is to play with their ego, and casually imply that other groups like are smarter, or that Asians are geniuses at math. It is a threat to their self esteem.

Right now there's a riot going on in Oakland over the verdict in the BART gun/taser policeman case, but the media won't use the word "riot." The CNN article is the most blatant, with the headline "Crowds hit streets after BART verdict."

You have to speculate about Jains being accepted as Indian but not Jews being accepted as Indian.

There are Indian Jews, but not many. There are 4 million Jains in India, though.

I'm not sold yet than Gujaratis are the ashkenazi jews of India

Europe isn't India. Because of the caste system, there are lots of groups that can qualify as the 'Jews of India' - Jains, South Indian Brahmins, Chettiars, Marwaris - basically any endogamous Merchant or Priestly caste. The best candidate, however, are the Parsis, who have a religion even more ancient than Judaism which is even more wary of converts, they are even more modern, rich and educated and while the Jews may be losing their asabiya, among Parsis that quality is sadly long gone (as a secular Jew and I'm rooting for both my own kind and for the Parsis).

Did you notice how your traffic increases when you write about Jews? Now your are in the 8,000+ range. Others have noticed that writing about them increases traffic too. One reason: because people are not allowed to critique them except in the alternative media.

It wasn't 20th Century team play as much as post-WWII teamplay. The struggle for the hearts and minds of yidden--the Jewish enlightenment or Haskala--has been going on for 200 years. It was just suppressed for a bit following WWII. Ultimately the black hats will win, however, due to superior breeding and commitment to Halacha. Secular Jewish women still champion birth control and abortion on demand. Whereas the Haredim have 6-8 kids per woman. That being said, the huge birth rate combined with their unwillingness to work or fight in the army does pose enormous problems for Israel in the short term.

Interestingly, the comments by secular Jews in Israeli papers and websites about the black hatters, how corrupt they are and how they unfairly work the system could be lifted straight from the pages of Julius StreIcher's rag.

Reciprocal networking is a great idea, if you're marginally talented, but it can be a pain in the ass for the exceptional, especially when they're no genuine barriers impeding your success. The Coens produce, direct, write, and edit all their movies because, I suspect, they don't trust anyone in Hollywood (The Coen brothers are set to direct the the film version of The Yiddish Policeman's Union). Kubrick worked in a similiar fashion, choosing to reside in England for most of his life.

1) Chabon may hate the "black hats", but unlike the gay cosmopolitan author, they are having lots of kids -- I'm surprised the report you cite below doesn't mention the enormous population boom among the ultra-Orthodox in Israel (and even here in America).

2) One interesting point about Indians and Israelis -- many Israelis vacation in India and the two countries have a history of security cooperation that goes back through history thanks to the fact that both countries have had to deal with crazy Muslim terrorists. I think you are on to something when you suggest that the Indians will win the Jews hearts for cultural reasons, rather than cold-hearted economic ones.

Jains being accepted as Indian? Wow I learn new things everyday! Here's news though, and very old: Jains have never been outsiders to Indian society - n.e.v.e.r This might be because they are firmly ensconced in the "Hindu tradition." (along with Buddhists, and to a large extent - Sikhs). As to Indian ethnocentrism, there probably won't be any. You may see Syrian Christians from the state of Kerala cooperating with Gujarati Jain merchants but it won't be a long-lasting ethnic bond of any kind, just the kinship of being Indian - barely, against some foreigners.

The striking thing to me is that the governments of Western nations tolerate and even encourage these sort of business practices, which they would never tolerate among their own people. It's an echo of the times when Jews were allowed to lend money but nobody else was.

If some white American family dominated a lucrative business sector by keeping everything between its own relatives, in the fashion of the diamond trade, the hammer of the state would fall swift and sure. But a "minority" can do the same thing with impunity.

It's as if the principal purpose of Western governments is to screw their own people.

"I had drunk a lot, and smoked a lot, and listened to a ton of great music... I had slept with one man whom I loved, and learned to love another man so much that it would never have occurred to me to want to sleep with him."

Maybe the influx of the Indians isn't the story. Maybe we should pay attention to the flight of the Jews instead.

As Edward Jay Epstein has noted on his web site - the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!

The DeBeers monopoly that has so controlled the diamond jewelry market is being threatened by Russian operators. Epstein has been predicting - I'm not sure what - but whatever is coming will be different. Maybe it's the Jews getting out of diamonds before the roof falls in.

On an average day I'll bet that the Fox News Channel will run fifty ads from gold sellers. Everyone preaches the wisdom of gold as an investment when governments spend too much. There are some silver promotions on TV too. But notice there are no ads advising people to invest in diamonds. This is because unlike gold, diamond prices are totally artificial in the sense that a small group of players adjust supply so as to set and hold prices at high levels.

The Russians Epstein fears are not focused sufficiently on the long term. He thinks they may dump too many stones on the world market so as to solve some immediate fiscal problem. The cartel system is breaking down and the Jews who are in the best position to know are getting out. The Indians seem to be playing the role of "the greater fool".

Small potatoes. Orthodox Jews are not economically all that adaptive and so lost to Asian-Indians in some aspects of the diamond business. But secular Jews are something else. They'll always stay several steps ahead of Asian-Indians because they'll be the ones who are creating the new order.

Jainism is not a racially based religion like Judaism. And Gujaratis will never get to the level Ashkenazi Jews are in America because they just aren't as smart as them. Indians in the diaspora could have had cohesive lobbies, but Indians are too diverse. There are over one billion people in greater India(including Pakistan, Tibet,Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka) and you could easily look track of the number of castes, languages, religions(Hinduism is a collection of faiths and philosophies) etc.

"I resent the way Jews are so smart... and how they then have the gall to try to take care of their own."

A Jewish professor of mine taught me that people who network between, look after, and take care of their own first are evil and racist and should be outed and Liberalized. The guy was really smart. So I am guessing he was right.

Steve said: "The diamond business has fascinated me ever since the 1980s when my future wife and I spent months shopping for diamonds because it is so different from the way companies I was familiar with ..."

When my future wife and I decided to shop for wedding bans in the late 1980s we traveled to San Francisco's Chinatown. The Grant avenue neighborhood at the time had many ethnic Chinese jewelry stores and competition was challenging. However, befitting San Francisco's exotic location, these stores and their owners were also unusual. All wedding rings were 24 karat gold and were sold by weight. In order to price a customer's choice, the owner would weigh the merchandise, inspect yesterday's closing price of gold, add his markup, and write down his asking price. The process was simple, obvious, and up front. Husband or wife could expect their purchase to assume its final rounded, trapezoid shape in a few months.

Months and years later during conversation with Chinese gals, they would look approvingly at my ring and relate stories of annoyed friends and embarrassed suitors who offered the object of their affection cheap 'alloy' rings.

The diamond business is probably one of the filthiest around. Oppenheimer and Rhodes had no qualms getting the Queen to destroy the Boers in South Africa in 2 wars all for the shiny stones. And whilst this two-face was installing Mandela, his company raked in all the stones in southern Africa. Oppenheimer asked that South-West-Africa be protected by the South African military during the Cold War so Oppenheimers diamond mines along the Skeleton coast would not fall into Russian hands. In those days the Cold War was also a delineation of the global diamond trade, with Russia and Oppenheimer (DeBeers) splitting the trade. DeBeers has also had no problems trading in blood diamonds all these years. They operate through shady intermediaries, usually of the same ethnic makeup. You only get a glimpse of this when you read in some obscure paper that another plane with Israeli diamond dealers (usually obfuscated as ”diamond mine executives”) went down in Angola or the Congo.Another low point was when Savimbi was murdered Angola in order to take control of his diamond fields. Apparently Israeli satellites were used to pin him down.I sincerely hope the ANC in South Africa will have the guts to do what the Afrikaners should have done under Apartheid, which is to nationalize DeBeers and confiscate all their mines. In fact they should issue international warrants and force them to pay back the value of the loot they have been stealing from South Africans during the last century. And DeBeers should be made to cough up for the 2 Boer wars and the socio-economic impact on Afrikaners, as well as cough up the difference to living wages they have been forfeiting their black and white miners during the last 100 years. They have been growing filthy rich on the resources which belonged to Afrikaners and blacks in South Africa in the last 100 years.

"I'm told this will be the biggest financial haul ever for a movie director from a single pic because James Cameron had a significant gross percentage of the Twentieth Century Fox megahit as helmer, writer, and producer. Though Hollywood pay experts tell me that the $350M all-in figure is largely attributable to his directing deal structured as "first dollar" gross or more likely "at cash break" gross. It's certainly bigger than either he or the studio -- or anyone -- thought he'd make from Avatar which, after its December 2009 release date, has grossed a best-ever $2.7 billion worldwide at the box office.

But Cameron is making $350 million because the DVD did beyond expectation," an insider tells me. Indeed, its 2D DVD and Blu-Ray worldwide sales smashed records in all categories. And still to come is the release of its 3D DVD in November. Meanwhile, yesterday, Twentieth Century Fox and Cameron announced that a "Special Edition" Avatar will be released in theaters August 27th as a limited engagement and exclusively in Digital 3D and IMAX 3D. This version will include more than 8 minutes of new footage. "With Cameron making $350 million, can you imagine what Fox and Dune Entertainment and Ingenious Media are making?" one of my insiders wondered, referring to the three companies that together bankrolled Avatar. And let's not forget there'll be an Avatar sequel... and maybe a threequel as part of what Cameron has been calling a "trilogy-scaled arc of story". And the production costs on the subsequent films should be far less because they've honed the 3D filmmaking technology process.

So much for that nutcase sdfasdasdf and his jews running in circles around Indians. LOL

Jains are like an elite business comunity in India but are not alone. There are also non Jain Gujrathis, Marwaris, Brahmin communities, Shettis, Baniyas, Parsis etc... all of them who can give jews a run for their money in business. A lot of the business talent in India has not been unleashed on the world yet. Only a few of them have leaked out. But with growing prosperity a lot more are leaving for foreign shores so I doubt the Jews have seen anything yet. I know some Indian friends who have done business with Jews but are not impressed. According to them the local Marwari grocery shop owners cum adulterators found all around India have far superior business acumen and cunning. They are yet to be unleashed on the world.

"In his authoritative account of the Calcutta Jewish community, Rabbi Ezekiel Musleah notes the role of the Jews in the opium trade: 'The opium trade is dominated by Jews. [...] Even the shipping of opium was almost entirely in Jewish hands.'"

"The Baghdadi Jews played a pivotal role in this infamous and unfair triangular trade that impoverished China and India"

"From the nineteenth century onwards Baghdadi Jews were very involved in Calcutta's booming real estate business. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, David Joseph Ezra, a prominent Calcutta Jew, was one of the leading property owners in the city. The Ezras owned some of the city's most imposing buildings in the most prestigious neighbourhoods. [...] In addition to real estate, the Jews dominated other economic engines."

"When the Baghdadi Jews came to India during British colonial rule at the end of the eighteenth century, with pre-capitalist trading networks already in place, they were poised to succeed in the mercantile phase of capitalism. Baghdadi Jews had long been part of trading networks; British imperialism provided the conditions for the expansion of these networks to new areas of the world."

"I know some Indian friends who have done business with Jews but are not impressed. According to them the local Marwari grocery shop owners cum adulterators found all around India have far superior business acumen and cunning. They are yet to be unleashed on the world."

This is why diversity sucks. It's also why I buy my gas from Cosco and try to shop for my needs and wants in bulk to avoid the Hindu/Korea colonization tax. Florists are another business heavily controlled by mercantile minorities, so I grow my own roses and freesias. Fortunately, they bloom around mothers day and my wife's birthday.

The State Department's "Arabists," who so outraged pro-Israel activists, were typically members of old Protestant missionary families who had started educational institutions in the Middle East in the 19th Century, such as the American University of Beirut. For example, basketball player Steve Kerr's father Malcolm left a nice job as, I think, vice-chancellor of UCLA when I was there, to become president of the American U. of Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, and was assassinated in 1984.

The "Arabists" typically spoke Arabic and had long ties to Christian Arab elites, so they had to be purged from the State Dept.

Jews are no different from say, Americans or Englishmen. In that SWPL class rivalry outdoes ethnic solidarity.

You don't need ethnic solidarity during good times. You can rely on the rising tide. But in bad times, when risk is high, you need it. So you can trust each other and have each others back in a risky, dangerous environment.

Re Cameron: he probably took the top off the revenue, he and the private equity probably left nothing for Fox.

Again with Cameron, betting on huge 3-D Blu-Ray sales with a depressed consumer spending and likely double-dip recession, when cheap piracy or Redbox $1 rentals are a reality, seems a poor bet.

The main point of Steve's post is well taken. Jews, who need ethnic solidarity the most (Muslims are a global threat to kill them, and are EVERYWHERE) have it the least. Modern life tends to erode ethnic solidarity among everyone ...

EXCEPT among Muslims, who have religious solidarity. Norway arrested a Uighur, Lebanese, Turk, etc. on a jihad-terror attack planned linked to the Times Square attempted bomber. What a Uigher would care about attacking Norway, ethnically, is beyond me. His beef is with China.

But Islam alone among all religions produces massive solidarity among diaspora ethnic people of no connection whatsoever. What does a Lebanese have in common with a Uighur? Brazilian and Italian catholics do not fly planes into the Gherkin to protest the Six Counties being ruled by the UK.

Jews are no different from say, Americans or Englishmen. In that SWPL class rivalry outdoes ethnic solidarity.

You don't need ethnic solidarity during good times. You can rely on the rising tide. But in bad times, when risk is high, you need it. So you can trust each other and have each others back in a risky, dangerous environment.

Whiskey,

There are better ways to play this shell game. You're not doing your side any favors by being so blatantly obvious and sounding so foolish.

Marwaris and Parsis already have many businesses of scale in India and therefore have little need to immigrate. Quite a few of the major Indian companies are from these two groups, despite their limited population size. The Parsis number merely about 100,000 and the Marwaris might be about 10-15 million total. There's another community called the Sindhi banias, who are supposed to be fairly decent businessmen.

Jains are supposed to be affluent too, but I think it's the Gujarati Jains that are superstar businessmen. My sense is that having a large ethnic network that starts in India and ends in Antwerp helps, a lot. Good work ethic, strong ethnic network, ability to get low prices, and moderately decent IQ.

The Chinese have their own highly mercantile groups, such as the Fujianese, Cantonese, and Zhejiangese (all southeasterners). These groups dominate domestic and international commerce and have been at the top of the sociecomic ladder for over a millenia. They also tended to win the majority of the top spots in the imperial exams, despite comprising maybe 10-15% of the population.

Within both China and India, there's likely been strong selection for mercantile and intellectual ability within geographically (China) or maritally (India) isolated subpopulations. Among the Chinese diaspora, pretty much everyone comes from the mercantile and academic southeast. Among the Indians, it's more mixed. That's why the performance of Indo-Fijians is so different from that of, let's say, Antwerp Jains or Sindhi merchants.

There are places with small populations from outside southeastern China; and those Chinese are very different from their southeastern brethren.

Both China and India are lands of the extreme in many ways, including human capital and IQ. This will likely cause major conflagration in the 21st century. Already China is seeing a lot of agitation between the southeastern industrial entrapranuers and the northern/central Chinese. In India, conflagration is diminished by strong socialist tendecies and quotas.

Gujarati banias Hindus, by the way, have fared very well in the U.S. and UK. Though they aren't anything like the Jews in commercial ability.

"Ultimately the black hats will win, however, due to superior breeding and commitment to Halacha. Secular Jewish women still champion birth control and abortion on demand. Whereas the Haredim have 6-8 kids per woman."

That argument gets beaten to death on this blog, but it ignores the crucial variable: what percentage of black hat kids stay black hats into adulthood? Most of today's secular and reform Ashkenazi Jews are only a few generations removed from black hat ancestors of their own.

EXCEPT among Muslims, who have religious solidarity. Norway arrested a Uighur, Lebanese, Turk, etc. on a jihad-terror attack planned linked to the Times Square attempted bomber. What a Uigher would care about attacking Norway, ethnically, is beyond me. His beef is with China.

But Islam alone among all religions produces massive solidarity among diaspora ethnic people of no connection whatsoever. What does a Lebanese have in common with a Uighur? Brazilian and Italian catholics do not fly planes into the Gherkin to protest the Six Counties being ruled by the UK.

This asabiya among contemporary Muslims is being generated as a result of the Western globalist elite and its relentless drive to envelop the entire world in its global trading network. Western elites are acting as de facto Islamic agents.

"A Jewish professor of mine taught me that people who network between, look after, and take care of their own first are evil and racist and should be outed and Liberalized. The guy was really smart. So I am guessing he was right."

And 'good decent people'--gee, I wonder who they would be--should network between, look after, and take care of their own in order to fight and destroy those EVIL PEOPLE.

"The main point of Steve's post is well taken. Jews, who need ethnic solidarity the most (Muslims are a global threat to kill them, and are EVERYWHERE) have it the least."

You're a laff riot, Whiskey. You should do stand-up comedy.

Whiskey is a riot but he has a point. Jews are a funny lot for they are, in some ways, the people with the most ethnic solidarity and the most individuality.

The funny thing is Jews, even when they utterly and sincerely reject Jewishness and Jewish interests, end up working with a whole bunch of other Jews. Being smart, they rise to control and dominate the same organization and institutions.

Take anti-Zionist leftist Jews. On the surface, it may seem like they are working against Jewish solidarity and interests. But in another way, these smart radical Jews end up pretty much in the same organizations and push policies which end up aiding Jewish interests just the same. Suppose some leftist Jews support open borders for sincerely universal and 'anti-racist' reasons. The fact remains that a more diverse US will be to the advantage of Jewish power since the Jewish elite that does care about Jewish power can play divide-and-rule among the diverse numbers of gentiles.

""How come you (and to be fair every commenter in your blog) are willfully pretending ethnically indian jews don't exist?"

For the same reason Steve didn't talk about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Jews in Israel when discussing the Iraq War?

They're not an elite intellectual population, so nobody here cares. "

I disagree. Ethnically Indian jews ARE an elite intellectual population in India. They just aren't at the level of Ashkenazis in the Anglosphere. However, they have significant capital and seem well integrated in India and (less well-integrated but) well-respected in World Jewry.

I'd analogize ethnically Indian jews in India to Lebanese Christians in the United States. They do fine, they're a well-performing minority, they can assimilate decently but not so well that they can represent the nation's archetype, they're on no one's short list for duopolistically dominating minority within the country.

"Both China and India are lands of the extreme in many ways, including human capital and IQ. This will likely cause major conflagration in the 21st century. Already China is seeing a lot of agitation between the southeastern industrial entrapranuers and the northern/central Chinese. In India, conflagration is diminished by strong socialist tendecies and quotas"

China has less variation in IQ because the Northern/Middle Chinese have high IQ too. Many of them have come and made Singapore to what it is including Lee Kuan Yew. Not the case with the masses of India who are quite dull. China is quite homogenous for its size, not as homogenous like the Koreas or Finland but far far more than places like India.

"Still think Indians have an IQ of 81?"Yes on average. I used to work on a site with Indian workers in the U.A.E. Trust me an average British junkie on drugs is a genius compared to them. And I am a British born Indian BTW.

Steve you really should move to a better blogging platform, one that allows organized replies to comments or that at least gives each some unique token (a timestamp even). And nice would be, voting on comments. Also nice would be something that forced an alias on people, so you can recognize (most) people past 'Anonymous'. Unfortunately I don't have any such software to recommend. I've been spoiled by Reddit's features, but it's not for blogging.

"Indian christians who supported the colonialists ( and some still do )"

What rubbish, typical BJP RSS nutcase propaganda. The division in India is Upper caste - Lower caste. I am a Hindu Brahmin and just like any smart westernised well aware Hindu I hate the RSS BJP kinds. They are like the ultra orthodox black hats of India.A Maharastrian Brahmin would rather give his daughter to a Bengali Brahmin rather than a Maharastrian Maratha.

There is also a Muslim-non Muslim divide and the Christians come in the Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh camp.

According to the BJP nazinuts history is simple. India was the greatest and richest nation in the world while the rest of the world were living naked and eating insects. The Egyptians, Chinese etc… copied everything from the Hindus. The Muslims came and raped everything. Then the British who were living naked in Europe and looted everything. Had the Brits not come every Indian would be a millionaire and the Brahmins would have been billionaires and the Brits would have been naked in Britain living in caves. Now the rest of the world is concerned about only one thing and one thing only, how to keep India down. The average English family, the typical Chinese worker, the Arab Sheikh etc… everybody think for nothing else but evil plans to keep India’s greatness down. This is world history for these retarded nuts.

Indians are highly fragmented along the lines of religion, caste, and language. Not nearly as cohesive as the Jewish community.

Jains seem to have a number of subdivisions, such as Gujaratis and Marwaris. The Marwari Jains are very successful, as are the Marwari Hindus. There are two Marwari Jain billionaires; impressive considering their limited numbers. By the way, steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal is a Marwari.

The Gujarati Jains are moderately prosperous, but not super rice. The Gujarati Jains, like other Gujartis of the bania caste, are maybe just moderate in IQ. However, very high in industriousness, thrift, and the strength of family and ethnic networks.

Also, Gujarati Jains can get low cost polishing done by their relatives in India. Big advantage over the Antwerp area Jewish traders, who do go overseas now (to low cost places like China) but lack those same close ethnic ties to their overseas locations and aren't as effective at cutting costs. As you indicated Steve, strong ethnic ties can be leveraged to succeed in this type of economic niche.

There are other groups of Jains too, so Jains are a diverse group. However, most Jains seem to be at least middle class by Indian standards. They have a high literacy rate of 95%. This is impressive.

As a group, the Gujaratis are probably the equivalent of the Cantonese or Fujianese in a lot of ways. Like those mercantile Chinese group, Gujaratis have lived by a coastal trading hub for a while and may have been culturally and genetically evolved for IQ and business acumen. Gujaratis used to dominate the trade in East Africa and outcompeted white traders in South Africa.

African blacks are doomed because there is no way they an compete with us Asians and the Asian (Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Arab, Iranian, Malay whatever)take over of Africa is inevitable. I suspect the Africans of the future will run to Whitey to save them from the big bad Asian dukkawalas.

To prosper in post colonial Africa, all one has to do is be non-black. Outperforming native Africans is like beating a one legged man in a foot race. Not exactly the pinnacle of bragging rights.

Amusingly enough, the same people (Indians) who keep harping on about this small endogenous Indian caste being successful or that particular near extinct religious group being rich seem to be extremely adroit at ignoring the fact that 40% of their population is illiterate. Or that according to the most recent WHO data, 46.6% of Indian children under the age of five are two or more standard deviations below normal weight (gaussian distribution would normally be only 2.2%). Even more shockingly 19% of Indian children under five are 3 standard deviations below mean weights (normally only 0.1%).

That is to say that nearly a fifth of India's future population is malnourished to such a degree that physiological defects are almost guaranteed. 81 average IQ is well believable.

Not me, I am talking about the idiots nuts who support the RSS-BJP Hindu fundamentalist policies. This is what I was told by my upper caste friends when I was a kid until when I grew up and went through world history. Europe's rise has hurt their self esteem a lot even though they had a lot to gain from it. I have also had RSS idiot nutcases telling me how the atom is related to the Hindu God Shiva! Will their stupidity not end. And a lot of them sadly are Brahmins!

"I disagree. Ethnically Indian jews ARE an elite intellectual population in India." Are you mad? Most Indian Jews belong to the Bene Israeli group who are poor, uneducated and live like untouchable lower caste Hindus running small oil mills. Most of them have run off to Israel by now. They are most likely low IQ but genetics has proven that they are the most closely related to the ancient Israelis. Except Major Jacob of the Indian army, I cannot name a single Indian Jew high-achiever since we left the British Empire.

The largest concentration of Indian jews were the Shaniwar Telis or low caste oil presser jews

The black cochin jews were untouchable converts

Neither very upscale

The bagdadi jews came in 1820 and were treated as white by the british and got favors and prospered, but nothing close to dominance, because there was plenty of Indian competition like Parsees, Marwaris, Jains etc

A Maharastrian Brahmin would rather give his daughter to a Bengali Brahmin rather than a Maharastrian Maratha.--If IQ is matched for the couple the bengali brahmin groom would have same IQ as the bride, whereas the Maratha would be 1 to 2 SD belowThe bengali brahmin would also be R1A like the Maharashtrian brahmin and have same sanskritic culture

and in 1948, the marathas burnt alive thousands of maharashtrian brahmins and siezed their lands--

There is also a Muslim-non Muslim divide and the Christians come in the Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh camp.

--

The christians are mostly in the muslim campThe 'secularists' who condone every islamic atrocity are heavily christian

In the Ayodhya movement or repeal of article 370 in Kashmir, have you ever seen an Indian xtian take a pro-Hindu anti-Muslim stance

--

And regarding Indian christians and colonialism do read their publications pre 1930Dr.Ambedkar when mass converting the Untouchables out of Hinduism, rejected christianity as it would strengthen the british colonialists and instead he chose Buddhism

The BJP has no future in India, and as far as political power goes, the Brahmins are nowhere to be seen. The current PM is a Jat Sikh. The Home Minister is a Tamil Chettiar. the current spelling bee champ is a Tamil Mudaliar. The hottest movie star is a Bunt, and the richest man is a Bania.

Increases in black IQ in America vis-a-vis Africa is not because of black achievement, but because of white largess. Not to mention the not insignificant European admixture in the American black population. I figure with America's present quixotic and dysgenic policies towards its Black population will rapidly erode whatever enlightenment that Whites have managed to imprint upon on them during the past few centuries via proximity. I suspect that majority black cities like Detroit and New Orleans are likely under-performing the national black average. Regression towards the mean is truly a bitch.

Likewise in the case of India, it's easy enough to better their conditions by inviting a couple hundred million of them into the United States (Please don't get any ideas), quite another for them to improve their conditions quite so dramatically on their own. After all, it's easier to pull someone else up off the ground than to get up on your own.

Singapore was built by Fujianese and Cantonese. Hardly any non-southeasterners in there, except a small percentage of highly educated, professional immigrants from the north.

Mongolia is a stagnant backwater, despite being populated by North Asians. So are Uzbekistan, Tajikstan, and Kyrgysztan. Kazakhstan is doing okay, but remember it's around 30-40% European and has a lot of natural resources (ie Brazil of Central Asia). If you think north Asians have high uniformly super high IQs, take a trip across these places.

I do remember reading a study that found Chinese kids were 5 IQ points higher than the Mongols living in two northern Chinese provinces (study compared school children of the different ethnicites), so I suppose the north/Central Chinese peasants might fare better than the Central Asians.

Chinese from sleepy Yunan province have also made their way to Burma. While they tend to easily outdo the native Bamars, they're not on anything like the level of Malaysian or Thai Chinese.

My guess would be that outside the middle class areas of large cities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai) and the southeastern coast, IQ is likely somewhat lower.

I did more research and I think I had an overinflated sense of enthnically Indian jews in India. Lybian Christians in America isn't a good comparison.

The one smart thing about this community is that they seemed to position themselves well with British colonial rule as a prescious population worthy of favoratism, and then ascertained that they'd be more prescious in the Israeli state after the end of British india colonial rule. That was smart in a Native Americans building casinos sort of way -though not in a Google/Kissinger sort of way.

Apparently Indian Jews are mostly in Israel now, and only number about 60,000. Beyond that they don't seem to be distinguishing themselves in India, Israel, or anywhere else. So I think they'll be prescious but not powerful as ties strengthen between India and Israel. However, because of their phenotypical and narrative precedent I think a technocratic class of ashki-indians is more likely to rise in a generation that is accepted as Indian in India and jewish in Israel (similar to the current ashki-wasp technocrat cohort) than a class of ashki-east asians that are accepted as East Asian in any East Asian country.

This Ashki-indian class would seem likely to me to encourage Israel-India ties over Israel-China ties.

Also I expect a wasp-indian interbred technocrat class to emerge --in fact, I already see this one as recently emerging with quite a few members in their mid-twenties and younger.

"The christians are mostly in the muslim campThe 'secularists' who condone every islamic atrocity are heavily christian"

I am not talking about political camps but social camps. Christians are bound to form alliances with Muslims as Hindus are the majority and this is common sense politics. In Bangladesh for example Hindus, Christians and Buddhists have a axis because the Muslims are the majority. It is that simple, but socially Christians are more likely to get along with Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists than Muslims. Christian-Hindu marriages are quite common in the educated middle classes of big cities and Hindus in such places do not care. Not so with Muslims yet.

“And regarding Indian christians and colonialism do read their publications pre 1930Dr.Ambedkar when mass converting the Untouchables out of Hinduism, rejected christianity as it would strengthen the british colonialists and instead he chose Buddhism”

Oh please, the British were never much into converting to Christianity. Yes Christians were given certain perks in the Raj, but the British Indian government was never big into converting. Most of the converting was done by missionaries who were independent of the government and though the government gave protection to these missionaries, at times the British authorities were concerned about their activities as this could lead to a Hindu backlash and they did not want trouble. Unlike the Portuguese, the British (and Dutch) were not that much into converting and were quite secular in their approach. For example when Bombay was under the Portuguese and the Muslims, Hindus were not given much freedom but when the city was given as dowry to the British, they gave equal opportunities to all religions and many temples were built at that time. The British Empire was very Roman like, indeed of all the later empires claiming descent from Rome (Russian Tsars, Holy Roman Empire, Ottoman Turks etc…), the British were the most Roman like. Religion was hardly important compared to trade and civilising the natives. I had come across a very interesting book comparing the ancient Romans to the British Empire, of how similar the Redcoats were to the legionaries and all that.You also forget that most Indians are Catholics (there are many Protestants and Orthodox too) and the British were predominantly Protestants.

The UK based Sri Lankan Tamil rapper M.I.A. who rose to fame recently, had a hit song called "Paper Planes" and has been nominated for two Grammy Awards and an Academy Award, is engaged to Benjamin Zachary Bronfman (aka Benjamin Brewer), son of Edgar Bronfman, Jr. the CEO of Warner Music Group, and a member of the Bronfman liquor dynasty.

M.I.A. gave birth to their boy on 11 February 2009, naming him Ikhyd Edgar Arular Bronfman.

I don't think Asian-Indians can match the Jews in upper echelons of science and technology, but maybe just maybe Asian-Indians can give Jews a run for the money in entertainment.

Bollywood may be silly but then so is Hollywood. At any rate, it seems like Hindus know how to make movie audiences happy in South and Southeast Asia with a winning FORMULA. Asian-Indians understand what people want.

M. Night Shylaman could have been another Spielberg if he hadn't got sidetracked by art-filmitis. Asian-Indians seem to have a savvy about Western pop culture that East Asians generally don't have. There was Hong Kong cinema, which was very influential on Hollywood--even with guys like John Woo making films over here--but at the managerial level, I'll bet Asian-Indians have more of a wheeler-dealer smarts to take on Jewish studio bosses.

If Asian-Indians do for TV and movies what they did for themselves in the diamond industry, it might indeed be interesting to watch.

"So are Uzbekistan, Tajikstan, and Kyrgysztan. Kazakhstan is doing okay, but remember it's around 30-40% European and has a lot of natural resources (ie Brazil of Central Asia)."

Kazakhs, Tajiks etc... are muslims and they come with their own set of problems. I find it hard to blieve that Northern Chinese people have lower IQ because they are much closer to Koreans and the Japanese who have much some of the higest IQs in the world.

"However, because of their phenotypical and narrative precedent I think a technocratic class of ashki-indians is more likely to rise in a generation that is accepted as Indian in India and jewish in Israel (similar to the current ashki-wasp technocrat cohort) than a class of ashki-east asians that are accepted as East Asian in any East Asian country."

What are you smoking? Theres a gazillion times more Jew male - East Asian female couples than there has been and will ever be Jew-Indian couples.

"Also I expect a wasp-indian interbred technocrat class to emerge --in fact, I already see this one as recently emerging with quite a few members in their mid-twenties and younger."

Most of the very few 'white'-Indian couples usually have middle-class whites not elites. The interracial marriage rates are pretty low for browns, again especially so in comparison to East Asians, and blacks. Maybe its all the interracial pornography with almost no Indians vis a vis east Asian vixens and black studs.

If interracial marriage rates do pickup for browns, the children will just be Americans.

The interracial trend that I have yet to see but would be interesting is brown-yellow interracial couples, and I'm talking browns and yellows in Asia, not the west.

The Tajiks and Kyrgz are pretty nominal Muslims for the most part. Anyway, the Mongols are Buddhists and they fare no better. I highly doubt the northern Chinese have that much of a different IQ than racially and geographically similar populations.

Also, a lower IQ is consistent with China's academic and economic domination by southeasterners.

WIth the Japanese and Koreans, both populations were genetically isolated long enough for some type of favorable mutation to gain predominance. Not so for the northern Chinese or other North Asians.

Worf,I agree that ashkenazi jewish-east asian and wasp-east asian marriages are much more common than ashkenazi-south asian and wasp-south asian marriages.

My point was specifically that I think the 1/2 south asian variants seem to me to be much better positioned to share in the technocrat's role in south asian countries with homogenous south asians than the 1/2 east asians are positioned to do in east asian countries.

In other words, for better and/or worse east asian nations seem less adaptable to incorporating 1/2 wasps or 1/2 ashkenazis into their leadership class than are south asians.

If the halvies are primarily a force for subversion of homogeneous majority populations than this is a good thing for East Asians and a bad thing for south asians.

If the halvies are primarily a global alliance benefit for the secondarily elite half of their genetic make up then I think it's a good thing for South Asians and a bad thing for East Asians.

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle -talented halvies situationally can be usurpers and exploiters, but more often their incentive-base is two lift up both halves of their heritage and encourage both to alliance against third party competitors.

So I think the greater integratability into South Asia for half anglo and half ashkenazi south asians is a factor that works to the net advantage of India in its strategic positionings in relation to China.

"The Tajiks and Kyrgz are pretty nominal Muslims for the most part. Anyway, the Mongols are Buddhists and they fare no better. I highly doubt the northern Chinese have that much of a different IQ than racially and geographically similar populations.

Also, a lower IQ is consistent with China's academic and economic domination by southeasterners.

WIth the Japanese and Koreans, both populations were genetically isolated long enough for some type of favorable mutation to gain predominance. Not so for the northern Chinese or other North Asians."

Worthy of note is the fact that the Chinese who have managed to achieve heavy dominance of the economy of the Russian Far East primarily hail from China's north-eastern provinces - the three provinces comprising the former Manchuria.

They are generally regarded as thuggish and dim by the rest of their compatriots, yet according to numerous media reports, now exercise control of much of Vladivostok's economy.

Regarding inane comments about Ashki-Indian hybrids, Most Indians are strongly against out of caste, out of religion is so disruptive, that many Indians will consider hiring a thug to disrupt things

Those who follow Indian news, do know that upper middle class Hindus hire thugs to kill their daughters non-Hindu lover. Gujurati rich hindus hire Babu Bajrangi who has intervened in christian-hindu marriages, muslim-hindu marriages, gotten the non-Hindu boy beaten up and the hindu girl forcibly aborted and forcibly divorced. And despite a veneer in the west, these things lurk just under the surface

"Maybe its all the interracial pornography with almost no Indians vis a vis east Asian vixens and black studs"

There is quite a large internet pornography wth White men and Indian women but nearly no Indian men and White women. Try Priya Rai or Destiny Deville (British born Pakistani) or Nadia Nyce (British born Indian) for examples of White men - South Asian women porn. Sunny Leone is an attractive Indian pornstar who does soft porn but is married to a Scandinavian/ Danish guy.

From this site where an Indian girl seems interested in light haired White guys.'Many East Indian models and beauty queens are married to White men. Model Alesia Raut married Russian Alexander Yanovsky while model Shyla Lopez tied the knot with Moscow-based Vladislav Vershinin. Celina Jaithley had White boyfriends like Sean Teague, before which she dated Swiss man Alex and Bill Cusack, while Manisha Koirala was dating Australian Crispin Conroy and London-based Cecile Anthony. Suchitra Pillai is married to Lars Kjeldsen from Denmark. Have you seen such couples around you?'

@worf - The interracial trend that I have yet to see but would be interesting is brown-yellow interracial couples, and I'm talking browns and yellows in Asia,--There are tens of millions in Nepal and North east India, mostly Hindus and Buddhists

To suggest an answer to Aaron's query far up ("why don't Jews and Indians hate each other?"), I suspect that Jews can maintain cordial relations with other ethnic groups that are similarly chauvinist and aggressive...i.e. not high trust, high cooperation groups like northern Europeans.

For anyone who hasn't read MacDonald, I wrote a massively condensed version of The Culture of Critique here: http://www.mypostingcareer.com/forums/index.php?/topic/107-the-culture-of-critique/

The book is filled with ideas and insights, do yourself a favor and at least read the Cliff Notes version.

Also it has to be noted that you just can't talk about Jews in a curious (i.e. critical, i.e. intelligent) way for more than about 15 minutes before someone starts whining about it. They are really the only group this is the case for. Steve can obsess about blacks, Mexicans, gays, Indians, Persions, Chinese, etc. until the sun goes down...BUT DUDE YOU SEEM TO HAVE THIS UNHEALTHY INTEREST IN JEWS.

a German/Jewish neocon pundit just wrote a column about how "the west" lets Israel down and that Israel just doesn't need Europe any longer because of its new partnership with India (I'm too lazy to translate it all but hopefully you can do it otherwise):

a German/Jewish neocon pundit just wrote a column about how "the west" lets Israel down and that Israel doesn't need Europe any longer because of its new partnership with India. (Sorry, but I'm too lazy to translate it myself.)

I resent the way Jews are so smart... and how they then have the gall to try to take care of their own.

I don't think they resent that Jews are smart and use their intelligence to take care of their own, but rather they resent that some supporters of Israel cleverly take care of Israel at the expense of America. According to the book "The Israel Lobby" the Iraq war (which cost America trillions of dollars and severely diminished America's power and credibility in the world)was masterminded by a small band of neocons with the support of verbally skilled pro-Israel voices in the media and a congress that was afraid to offend the Israel lobby. In addition the primary reason America is resented by Muslim extremists is because it's seen as a puppet for Israel.

So while everyone respects Jews for their high verbal IQ and impressive wealth and influence, when a subset of pro-Israel individuals use their intellectual, financial and media resources to drag America into the conflict in the middle east, it does not serve American interests.

In some ways this figure makes sense. India was first populated by proto-Australoids, then invaded by various non-white caucasoids (Dravidians, Persians) and later invaded by whites (Ayrians). According to Richard Lynn, Australoids have an average IQ of 62, non-white caucasoids have an average IQ of 84, and whites have an average IQ of 100. If we assume the Indian gene pool is roughly an equal mix of these three groups, then average their IQ's together gives a mean IQ in the low 80s. However because of the genetic diversity, one might expect the IQ standard deviation to be quite larger. A high standard deviation combined with a huge population suggests that India may have a very formidable cognitive elite despite the average IQ being so low. Then when you factor in how malnourished Indians are, that formidable cognitive elite is even more impressive when reared in Amercica where the brain has the nutrition to reach its full genetic potential.

Or that according to the most recent WHO data, 46.6% of Indian children under the age of five are two or more standard deviations below normal weight

If malnutrition stunted the average weight in India by two standard deviations, I wonder if the average IQ of 81 could also be stunted by two standard deviations (30 points)by malnutrition. That would make the average IQ 111 if Indians were reared with American nutrition. And then I read this comment:

The US Indian diaspora, with only 50% brahmins and merchants with 50% kulak peasants scores 112 IQ in the second generation after regression to mean

@Catperson,There have been malnutrition studies in India, and it stunts IQ by 10-15 points

being conservative, use 10

The bottom half of the Indian IQ pyramid, muslims, untouchables and tribals who make up 40% of the population are essentially absent in the US diaspora

In Fiji, which is much richer than India, and has low caste and untouchables , Indian IQ is 84

Several Indian Fiji have migrated to Silicon Valley and unlike the A scoring brahmins, they score F in ChemistryLocal teachers are stumped - How can an Indian get an F in chemistry,The non-PC answer is caste genetic IQ

@Anon, yes 46% of the Indian population is malnourished, same rate as black africans

When you bring black africans to the west, their IQ rises by 10

Same will happen in India and IQ will rise by 10 from 81, when the economy improves

A couple mistakes here. First, the degree of malnutrition is much worse in India than it is in Africa. 41% of sub-Saharan Africans are stunted compared to 62% of South Asians (source: pg 184 of Richard Lynn's "Race Differences in Intelligence"). Second, "pure" blacks average IQ 67 in Africa but average IQ 80 in America suggesting that first world nutrition boosts their IQ 13 points (not 10 only). Indians can be expected to enjoy an even larger boost seeing as they are even more malnourished than Africans are.

@catpersonThe split between Indians and Australoids is 40K years and 40K years ago, there was not much genetic distance between caucasoids and australoids

Indian IQ standard deviation is very low, more like 10-12Which may explain few Indians over 160, and few NobelsOn the other hand, it is very rare to find a brahmin or merchant ( without mental retardation ) as low as blue collar white ( 92IQ ), because in each generation the low IQ males dont get a wife

My particular sub-caste has been endogamous at the sub-caste level for over 1000 yearsby which time, IQ tends to get fixated

India is like Brazil, 40% low IQ muslims untouchables and tribals, at African American levels ( with nutrition )40% peasants at blue collar white and 20% merchants and brahmins at near jewish levels

The Agha Khan has deliberately married white for 3-4 generations to blend in with the white power structure

Some Indian white hybrids areAlesia Raut, Anya Lahiri and Rhona Mitra

Large scale Indian white mixing will simply lead to being absorbed into the generic white christian pool, whereas a small scale with careful screening for middle class to upper middle class Indo-phile or neo-pagan or vegetarian will lead to the retention of caste and religion , yes cute nurses are definitely better than elite trophys, and over time will break the political glass ceiling for Hindu Americansas the new generations look more caucasoid and with higher IQ upper caste genes , can lead to dominance

Neo-pagan / vegetarian are usually middle to upper middle class and college material, and over 110 IQ

SUSIE GHARIB: Walt Disney, Warner Brothers and Sony Entertainment have something in common. They all out source animation to India. Making animation films in India is much cheaper than in Hollywood and that's fueling a boom for India's growing animation industry. As Sapna Bhatia reports, it now generates annual revenues of about half a billion dollars and is poised to cross the billion dollar mark in just a few years.

SAPNA BHATIA, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: In this office in Hyderabad in south India, hundreds of animators are breathing lives into cartoon characters. If you think that animation is child's play, then think again, as this is a job that only the tough survive. This cliche is true for Tapas Chakravarty who is the CEO of DQ Entertainment, one of the first companies to get into animation outsourcing.

TAPAS CHAKRAVARTY, CEO, DQ ENTERTAINMENT: I remember the year 2000, 2001 it was so difficult to get even my foot into the door of any company. But today me and some of my colleagues from this country red carpet welcome.

BHATIA: And the most coveted international awards like the Emmys are getting picked up by Indian organizations. So, what is the secret behind the success of the Indian animation outsourcing story? It is money. The hiring cost of skilled people in India is low as a result of which production costs come down. A full-length animated movie in the U.S. will cost around $100 million, as compared with $30 million if work is outsourced to India. Animation is a highly labor intensive industry where numbers are important.

BASWA RAJU, PRODUCTION MANAGER: We have around 22,000 to 25,000 drawings for a complete 22 minute of show.

BHATIA: Baswa Raju works as a production manager and is responsible for the timely delivery of the animated product. More than 100 people work on a 22 minute film. The average age of people working in this industry is 25 and all of them are eager to learn.

CHAKRAVARTY: Six months to one year of extensive training and you have a qualified animation guy in your hand. Two years of practice, he can compete with anybody in Hollywood.

BHATIA: Like Hollywood, India has its Bollywood, which churns around 1,000 movies a year, making India the world's largest producer of films. Analysts like Indu Mirani think that this fact further helps the animation industry.

INDU MIRANI, BOLLYWOOD TRADE ANALYST: You get the same technology that you could get in Hollywood or in Australia or anywhere else and yet it is far cheaper to do it here so I think, it is a very simple business decision.

BHATIA: Clients from different countries send the scripts and storyboards to India for production. Badri Narayan works as an animation supervisor and looks after the creative side of business.

BADRI NARAYAN, ANIMATION SUPERVISOR: Once the storyboard is here, we start with the layout department. I have to check the quality of the layouts with the references given by the client or the director. Then I hand over (ph) to animators.

BHATIA: This is how a 2d animation process works. Now, Indian companies are also doing 3d and highly skilled special effects animation where more digital skills are required. When the film "Golden Compass" picked up an Oscar for visual effects, artists in India who worked on the movie rejoiced.

CHAKRAVARTY: In three to four years time, India will be the hub of animation outsourcing, animation content development the way India is the hub for software development.

BHATIA: And some people will be building this story frame by frame. Sapna Bhatia, Hyderabad, India.

SUSIE GHARIB: Walt Disney, Warner Brothers and Sony Entertainment have something in common. They all out source animation to India. Making animation films in India is much cheaper than in Hollywood and that's fueling a boom for India's growing animation industry.

SAPNA BHATIA, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: In this office in Hyderabad in south India, hundreds of animators are breathing lives into cartoon characters. This cliche is true for Tapas Chakravarty who is the CEO of DQ Entertainment, one of the first companies to get into animation outsourcing.

BHATIA: And the most coveted international awards like the Emmys are getting picked up by Indian organizations. So, what is the secret behind the success of the Indian animation outsourcing story? It is money. The hiring cost of skilled people in India is low as a result of which production costs come down.

CHAKRAVARTY: Six months to one year of extensive training and you have a qualified animation guy in your hand. Two years of practice, he can compete with anybody in Hollywood.

BHATIA: Like Hollywood, India has its Bollywood, which churns around 1,000 movies a year, making India the world's largest producer of films. Analysts like Indu Mirani think that this fact further helps the animation industry.

INDU MIRANI, BOLLYWOOD TRADE ANALYST: You get the same technology that you could get in Hollywood or in Australia or anywhere else and yet it is far cheaper to do it here so I think, it is a very simple business decision.

BHATIA: This is how a 2d animation process works. Now, Indian companies are also doing 3d and highly skilled special effects animation where more digital skills are required. When the film "Golden Compass" picked up an Oscar for visual effects, artists in India who worked on the movie rejoiced.

There have been malnutrition studies in India, and it stunts IQ by 10-15 points

being conservative, use 10

That's a meaningless assertion. That's like saying bad genes stunt IQ by 10 points. It's a matter of degree. Mild malnutrution may only stunt IQ by 5 points. Severe malnutrition may stunt IQ by over 30 points. With 60% of the population being stunted, I suspect virtually everyone in India to be malnourished to some degree. Height is a good analogy; the average man in India is only 5'5", yet in North America with better nutrition, it's not uncommon to see Indian men who are 6'4". Analagously, it's not uncommon to see Indian men in North America with IQ's of 130. Height is even more genetic than IQ, so if height can be so severely stunted by Indian malnutrition, so can IQ.

The split between Indians and Australoids is 40K years and 40K years ago, there was not much genetic distance between caucasoids and australoids

But the australoids (both in India and Australia) stayed primitive while their cousins evolved into caucasoids.

Indian IQ standard deviation is very low, more like 10-12

I doubt it's that low. Do you have a citation?

Which may explain few Indians over 160, and few Nobels

We have no idea how many Indians are over 160. Nobel prize is not a culture neutral yardstick.

In Fiji, which is much richer than India, and has low caste and untouchables , Indian IQ is 84

But the Indians in Fiji are mostly descended from indentured labourers brought to the islands by Fiji's British colonial rulers so they represent the bottom rung of India's socio-econoic hierarchy. They are not a representative sample of India's gene pool, and while Fiji may be a lot richer than India, nutrition standards are probably still way behind America.

Last week I met my half American cousin at a wedding for the first time --

yet she failed to be completely accepted by her Indian relatives. Though outwardly everything was peaceful there was a reserve and she could feel it. They always remembered at the back of their minds that she went to Church and read the Bible and feasted on beef too. That made her ‘not really acceptable’.

@catpersonYes Fiji Indians are the bottom rung of the Indian heirarchy, and yet they achieve 84IQ with adequate nutritionSo 84IQ represents the absolute floor of Indian IQ with nutrition and is roughly African American IQAlso this 84IQ is higher than the 78IQ of the fat oil arabs--

Regarding smaller SD for Indian IQ

About 40 years ago, an inbreeding study was done on south Indian brahminsSouth Indian brahmins diverged from North Indian brahmins about 2000 years agoor 100 generations agoThey were also limited in number and were forced to marry closer relationsSo on average they married their 2nd cousins and this went on for 100 generationsI would suggest that this would have led to a large amount of homogeniety and less SD variation in IQIn the meantime, other castes split into thousands of sub-castes and this meant a smaller marriage pool and similarly less SD for IQ

Mejor recent development is emergence of South Indian landed castes in Andhra dominating the IIT entrance exams, giving a complete bruising to Tamil Brahmins. This is good news as it shows Indias high IQ pool is deeper than thought.

Like others, I'm puzzled as to why it is that Northern Chinese might be less successful that their Southern counterparts, or for that matter why Mongols have lower IQ than the Chinese and Koreans. Up until now, history is full of opposite examples. For instance, the Manchus, who are closely related to the Koreans, managed to conquer all of China. And everyone knows what the Mongols were able to accomplish. As to why the Mongols of the present pale in comparison to those of the past, I think that they were a victim of their own success. They were vastly outnumbered by the lower-IQ people that they conquered, and some of the interbreeding carried back to the Mongol homeland. This happened on an even greater scale with the Turks (the original Turkic peoples were from the same North Asian race as the Mongols). Of course, today you would never guess from looking at the Turks that their culture originated in North Asia. In the case of the Turks and the Central Asian 'stans (which are mostly Turkic as well), you also have to consider the effect of Islam, which by itself is good for a 5-10 point lowering of IQ.

"To suggest an answer to Aaron's query far up ("why don't Jews and Indians hate each other?"), I suspect that Jews can maintain cordial relations with other ethnic groups that are similarly chauvinist and aggressive...i.e. not high trust, high cooperation groups like northern Europeans."

There could be something to this. Jews and Italians seem to get on pretty well--there are lots of 'pizza-bagel' hybrids in Long Island. The most famous one I can think of is, of course, Howard Stern... who always represented blue-collar blue-state masculinity in a way I thoroughly enjoyed.

"But the Indians in Fiji are mostly descended from indentured labourers brought to the islands by Fiji's British colonial rulers so they represent the bottom rung of India's socio-econoic hierarchy. They are not a representative sample of India's gene pool, and while Fiji may be a lot richer than India, nutrition standards are probably still way behind America."

Many people in Fiji seem to come from good castes like the Merchant classes. This claim that only lower caste people went to Mauritius, Fiji or Trinidad is utter rubbish. Many Brahmins and other upper caste people went to. V.S. Naipaul is brahmin and his ancestors went as labourers. Thus these places do not represent the ‘IQ floor’ of India but are a reasonable sample of Indian IQ.

Celina Jaithley is Hindu. Just because she has dated White men does not mean you can baptise her.And if you want to see loads of Hindu Indian girls with White men go to big British cities like Birmingham. They are everywhere. And a few I know are upper castes, daughters of doctors.

"Northern Chinese are closer to Mongols, a bigger stronger but less intelligent people. Southern Chinese are very small and speak a really funny sounding dialect, Cantonese, which I cannot stand."

Very unlikely, it is likely that Southern Chinese have higher verbal IQ and thus dominate the business world, much like the Jews. In raw IQ Northern Chinese would be higher because they live in a much colder climate, like Northern Euros.

"Sanjay Gupta 35, married a blonde 36IMHO, he made a horrible mistake and could have traded his money for an upper caste Indian woman who looks almost like a bollywood star and aged just 28"

Desis guys are crazy about blonde women. Atleast most of my desi male freinds do. However very few get them so they have to marry a desi girl. They all claim White women are loose (as if western born Indian girls are not) and not marriage material, but given half the chance most would marry one.

Yes Fiji Indians are the bottom rung of the Indian heirarchy, and yet they achieve 84IQ with adequate nutrition

Near-adequate nutrition. Richard Lynn reports that Indians and Pacific Islanders living in Fiji both average IQ 84, however he also reports that Pacific Islanders living in first world countries average IQ 84-90. Thus we might assume that non-Brahmin Indians living in first world conditions would also score 84-90. However Brahmins living in first world countries seem to average IQ 112. So we might estimate that the bottom 80% of India would average IQ 87 with U.S. nutrition, while the top 20% would average IQ 112 with U.S. nutrition. So overall, Indians probably have an average IQ potential of 92. This is similar to how they score in Europe, so I assume Europe has a representative sample of Indians. One mystery is that Indians in India score 81 which is only 11 points lower than 92. Malnutrition in India is so severe that I would expect average IQ to be stunted by more than 10 points, so perhaps the average IQ would be even lower in India if you could get a really representative sample (i.e. including the most malnourished australoids)

Also this 84IQ is higher than the 78IQ of the fat oil arabs

The 78 figure sounds cherry picked. Most Arab countries have IQ's similar to African American levels, however they have much less nutrition and white admixture than African Americans. With first world nutrition, I assume Arabs and Indians would both score 92. They're both essentially the same race (i.e. non-white caucasoids) and if anything, Indians are dragged down by the australoid element.

I would suggest that this would have led to a large amount of homogeniety and less SD variation in IQ

I would agree that each caste has a small SD, but there might be so much IQ variation BETWEEN castes that the IQ SD for India as a whole is large.

An interesting question is what is the IQ standard deviation of Brahmins and how does it compare to the IQ SD of Ashkenazi Jews. Both groups have a mean IQ of about 110 (when reared with U.S. nutrition) however there are only about 11 million Ashkenazi in the world, but hundreds of millions of Brahmins. Unless the Brahmin standard deviation is significantly smaller than Askenazi's, I'd expect there to be far more potential Brahmin geniuses than Ashkenazi geniuses.

"the Bene Israel of Bombay, who were separated from the Jewish Diaspora, and the Cochin Jews, who were more well integrated (the Bene Israel did not have the Talmud, the Cochin Jews did). Both these groups resemble their Indian host populations genetically."

This varies from the Y chromosome studies, but as we should all know by now, the pure patriline is a tiny, tiny portion of total ancestry.

Do you think it's somehow more "alpha" to not admit you were wrong about Avatar? Come on, just make some joke about your renowned prognostication skills and let it die. Otherwise, you just look ridiculous.

This fixation on caste is a bit much. Yes, some of the Brahmin subcastes do tend to be pretty smart, but the lower castes were historically disbarred from education and many live in dire poverty even today. Under more equal conditions, I think the low castes would somewhat close the gap.

For the Indian population as a whole, 91-93 is probably a realistic estimate.

Indo-Fijians were IQ tested back in the early 1970s, when the population was very uneducated and poor. Poor to the point where the Indians mixed water with their milk and walked to school barefooted. Indians are much wealthier today and eat better, so a curent IQ test might be okay.

Besides, the Indo-Fijians tested at IQ of 84 and so did the native Fijians. Yet, for anyone familiar with the country, it's apparent that the Indians are well on top today. I'm skeptical they are still at such a low level.

In Australia and Canada, most Indo-Fijians are working class and they have a high rate of home ownership. Not great, but not bad. Consistent with a low/mid 90s IQ and good work ethic and family structure.

Indo-Fijians tend to work hard and have big ambitions (doctor, lawyer, etc.) like those from India, but they're not super bright. So some definitely make it into these fields, but the bulk are in more modest working class and middle class careers. Then again, same is true for white Americans. So, maybe that's not so bad after all. Indo-Fijians are quite a bit above the NAMS economically and academically.

If Indo-Fijians are really representative of India, then things don't look too bad.

The hottest girls are Meditteranean and near eastern - Italians, Greeks, Persians, Lebanese. Some of the Bollywood girls and few regular Indians have that look. I don't care for blondes, but they seem to be popular for some reason.

Foreign born Indians are a lot into the fair and lovely, but a lot of American born Indians seem to have the yellow fever.

This claim that only lower caste people went to Mauritius, Fiji or Trinidad is utter rubbish. Many Brahmins and other upper caste people went to. V.S. Naipaul is brahmin and his ancestors went as labourers. Thus these places do not represent the ‘IQ floor’ of India but are a reasonable sample of Indian IQ.

I don’t doubt that some high caste Indians became migrant laborers, but obviously the elite of India is going to be underrepresented in such samples. Indentured labor is hard work, so Indians with the brains, education or money to avoid it almost certainly did so, so we’re left with a sample that is largely devoid of the top Indian intelligence.

A similar phenomenon can be observed in East Asians. Richard Lynn reports that East Asians in the U.S. have an average IQ of 101 (though this may be depressed by language) compared to 105 in East Asia, a discrepancy he resolves in part by observing that U.S. East Asians are largely descended from unskilled laborers.

One might even extend the argument to African Americans. Part of the reason they score low might not be just because they are black, but also because they are descended from slaves which probably represent the lower end of the African gene pool (the more intelligent Africans were presumably able to evade capture or were members of the ruling class that sold other Africans into slavery). I find it interesting that despite that fact that almost all African Americans are descended from slaves, the one African American who becomes president (obama) just happens to be of non-slave descent, almost as if the same high IQ genes that allowed his ancestors to avoid slavery allowed him to become president. Of course you can’t take this argument very far because the black IQ in America is actually much higher than the black IQ in Africa though this is because of nutrition and white admixture.

Indo-Fijians were IQ tested back in the early 1970s, when the population was very uneducated and poor. Poor to the point where the Indians mixed water with their milk and walked to school barefooted. Indians are much wealthier today and eat better, so a curent IQ test might be okay.

A better sample might be Indians in South Africa. They average IQ 86 compared to white South Africans who average IQ 94, coloured South Africans who average IQ 83, and “pure” black South Africans who average 69. Whites normally score 100 in first world countries so we might assume that the bad nutrition in South Africa depresses IQ by 6 points, which gives Indians an IQ potential of 92 (86+6). On the other hand, “pure” blacks reared in the U.S. average IQ 80 suggesting that malnutrition for minorities in South Africa depresses IQ by 11 points which gives Indians an IQ potential of 97 (86+11). Indians in South Africa probably enjoy better living standards than “pure” blacks and worse living standards than “pure” whites, so the intermediate “Coloureds” is probably the best group to compare them to. In the U.S. mulattoes average IQ 90 suggesting that malnutrition for non-black minorities in South Africa depresses IQ by 7 points. Adding 7 points to Indians gives IQ 93, but even this might be an underestimate of Indian IQ potential because South African Indians are also descended from laborers.

Actually Indian guys do pretty well with white girls in London. The Punjabi Kashmiri gene pool can produce a meditterenean look that is a touch more tasty than the pallid and homely stock typical in the British isles. They generally don't marry white girls though

@CatpersonAt each step down the caste heirarchy, there is a 0.5 to 1 SD variation, Indian IQ in its crudest approximation is TrimodalUpper castes, Peasantry, Untouchables+muslims+tribalIt is more a 20 / 40 / 40 split not an 20 / 80 split

The US IQ of 112 is for a blend of 50% upper castes + 50% peasantry, Pure Brahmin sample would be much higher

Indians in south africa are about 40% untouchable, 40% peasant and 20% merchants, no brahmins

Regarding Naipaul and caribbean indentured laborThe british very deliberately chose untouchable and peasants because they wanted sugar cane farmers and they deliberately screened out brahmins because they felt it would be easier to cheat and manipulate the Indian labor if no educated brahmin was aroundSome brahmins like Naipauls changed their names to fool the british and migrated anyways since India was under famine

I think it would be a good idea to either have the hordes of Indian commentators back-up their assertions with data or not post. The vast majority of posters of such a nature add no value to discussions and indulge in silly speculation.

Most of the data available indicates that Indians have an IQ in the low 80s, and convoluted theories to give a miraculous boost to the Indian IQ lack substance.

Rec1man(aka G Subramaniam) especially spews major league bullshit while maintaining anonymity, and is statistically illiterate.

"Their status has gone up now, after their Cohanim descent was discovered"

Umm ... yeah? Like anyone in India really knows/cares about this stuff. And it's also news that they're returning to India. This is complete BS.

"Sanjay Gupta 35, married a blonde 36IMHO, he made a horrible mistake and could have traded his money for an upper caste Indian woman who looks almost like a bollywood star and aged just 28"

Yeah? How does YOUR opinion matter when it comes to HIS marriage?

"Regarding Naipaul and caribbean indentured laborThe british very deliberately chose untouchable and peasants because they wanted sugar cane farmers and they deliberately screened out brahmins because they felt it would be easier to cheat and manipulate the Indian labor if no educated brahmin was aroundSome brahmins like Naipauls changed their names to fool the british and migrated anyways since India was under famine"

Links? Do you want to keep spewing unsubstantiated garbage or will you back ANYTHING up with facts? Names were changed AFTER going to the Carribean - Nagpal became Naipaul, Ramprasad became Rampersaud, etc.

Your facts are off-base here, as usual.

It's easy to rip the entire argument to shreds, should one choose to do so. Anyway, I do hope readers and Steve will take these speculations with a pinch of salt, for there's no substance behind them.

Most of the data available indicates that Indians have an IQ in the low 80s, and convoluted theories to give a miraculous boost to the Indian IQ lack substance.

Most of the data indicates that Indians in India have IQ's in the low 80s, but Indians in India suffer from severe malnutrition. 62% of South Asians are stunted (see pg 184 of Richard Lynn's Race Differences in Intelligence) The average man in India is only 5'5". If Indian height can be so severely stunted by malnutrution, why can't Indian IQ be analogously stunted? During world war I white American men were only 5'7" and only scored around 80 (by today's standards) on IQ tests, but with improvements in nutrition, their IQ's and height increased by well over 1 SD. It's perfectly natural to expect Indian IQ to show a similar increase, especially since they are currently far more malnourished than white Americans ever were.

"I think it would be a good idea to either have the hordes of Indian commentators back-up their assertions with data or not post. The vast majority of posters of such a nature add no value to discussions and indulge in silly speculation."

In case you haven't noticed Indians have a tendency to hype themselves up. Its quite funny and pathetic, given the ground realities, at the same time.

"Umm ... yeah? Like anyone in India really knows/cares about this stuff. And it's also news that they're returning to India. This is complete BS.

Yeah? How does YOUR opinion matter when it comes to HIS marriage?"

These old geezers are like lonely housewives that have too much time on their hands. Hence a very 'Indian' element or tone of 'gossip' in they way they analyze everything.

"Links? Do you want to keep spewing unsubstantiated garbage or will you back ANYTHING up with facts? Names were changed AFTER going to the Carribean - Nagpal became Naipaul, Ramprasad became Rampersaud, etc. "

No no no, any successfull intelligent accomplished brown person must have been 'brahmin blood', non-brahmins are all sub-human.

"Anyway, I do hope readers and Steve will take these speculations with a pinch of salt, for there's no substance behind them."

I think Steve is sorta blinded by his belief that small minorities that excel at collective action are the be-all end-all of how history unfolds, rather than just one of many factors at play.

Indians have a low 80s IQ under third world poverty, but low/mid 90s IQ under first world conditions. However, there also seems to be tremendous variance, with some castes likely being at or above the Western mean.

In Singapore, Indians do alright in comparison to the Chinese and much better than the Malays. This is impressive when you consider that the large bulk of Indians came as coolie laborers from South India.

Indians are likely lower in mean IQ than white Europeans, Japanese, Koreans, and Southeastern Chinese. Just not that much lower - and given the high variance, a lot of Indians( especially from the cognitive elite professional class) are competitive with those groups.

This is why Goldman Sachs hires lots of Indians. Being darkies has nothing to do with it, seeing as how Goldman could hire a lot of Puerto Ricans or Dominicans in nearby NYC and get really good press - yet it doesn't. Favoritism from Indian managers has nothing to do with Goldman liking Indians, seeing as how Goldman is a Jewish firm.

Possible, but malnutrition was virtually absent in South Africa amongst Indians who were chiefly an urban population. Their IQs were registered at 86. Why ignore this important data point?

Actually Indians in South Africa appear to quite malnourished:

http://www.doh.gov.za/facts/1998/sadhs98/chapter13.pdf

The average South African Asian man (by which they presumably mean Indian man) is only 170 cm tall (just under 5’7”). Unless Indians are genetically shorter (and judging by all the tall Indians in North America, I doubt it) such diminutive stature implies substantial malnutrition. When white American men were malnourished to the point of being only 5’7” (circa 1917), they averaged IQ’s around 80 (against today’s norms). As the 20th century progressed improved nutrition drove white American young men up to a height of 5’10.5” and an IQ of 100. If South African Indians showed the same 20 point jump in IQ when exposed to modern first world nutrition, that would give them a mean IQ of 106. This may help explain why Indian Americans are so successful, both academically and economically. Add to that the fact that Indian Americans include the elite Brahmins (a group another poster claims is absent in South Africa) and this may explain why Indians Americans average SAT scores comparable to Ashkenazim.

In a 1990 study, Indian children in South Africa scored 6 points below the white mean on the Standard Matrices. Coloreds scored 14 points below and blacks scores 27 points below. The white mean in South Africa, relative to the white British mean, was 94. Not sure why, but perhaps there was a flaw in the test or maybe it emphasized something culturally biased.

Regardless, what's relevant is that:

a.) White South Africans built a first world economy and likely are a fair representation of white cognitive abilityb.) Indians scored 6 points below the white mean, which is not bad.c.) Coloreds scored 14 points below, which is consistent with their origins as being a hybrid population (SE Asia, white, Indian, black). d.) Indians are intermediate between coloreds and whites, which is consistent with a mean IQ about 6-7 points below the white mean.

I would expect India to ultimately progress to something resembling Turkey or a less violent version of Brazil, but on a larger scale.

"Regarding Naipaul and caribbean indentured laborThe british very deliberately chose untouchable and peasants because they wanted sugar cane farmers and they deliberately screened out brahmins because they felt it would be easier to cheat and manipulate the Indian labor if no educated brahmin was aroundSome brahmins like Naipauls changed their names to fool the british and migrated anyways since India was under famine"

This is utter rubbish, read Naipaul's books. His ancestors were openly upper caste and maintained the caste system in the Caribbean. The British did not care which caste made it to their sugar growing colonies.

"The hottest girls are Meditteranean and near eastern - Italians, Greeks, Persians, Lebanese. Some of the Bollywood girls and few regular Indians have that look. I don't care for blondes, but they seem to be popular for some reason.

Foreign born Indians are a lot into the fair and lovely, but a lot of American born Indians seem to have the yellow fever."

That is your perspective. I think Northern Europeans are far better looking than Mediterranean and near Eastern types. Northern Euros tend to have more delicate evolved facial features. But that is my point of view. You cannot make you point of view into something absolute for everybody.

"The Punjabi Kashmiri gene pool can produce a meditterenean look that is a touch more tasty than the pallid and homely stock typical in the British isles."

Far from it, I feel British people are far better looking than Kashmiris and Punjabis. North Indians tend to have heavier and unattractive facial features compared to Northern Euros. Besides only a few of the North Indians are good looking. I have been to Delhi, Chandigarh etc.. most people are far from attractive but they are far better looking than the subcons living in the middle and southern parts of India.

Indians are likely lower in mean IQ than white Europeans, Japanese, Koreans, and Southeastern Chinese. Just not that much lower - and given the high variance, a lot of Indians( especially from the cognitive elite professional class) are competitive with those groups.

The vast majority of Indians are backward and untouchable caste Indians who have demonstrably lower IQs than the non-Indian high-IQ groups mentioned.

One can only compare the top strata of India society to these non-Indian groups. The operating assumption should be a much lower IQ variance within each caste (esp elite) due to thousands of years of interbreeding in India, often to cousins.

Wouldn't the similar IQ levels but this lower variance for Indians explain the large discrepancies between how NE Asians and SE Asian Indians perform by elite measures such as the IMO?

The plus side of a smaller variance is less regression to the mean for highly inbred elite Indian groups.

"Most of the data indicates that Indians in India have IQ's in the low 80s, but Indians in India suffer from severe malnutrition. 62% of South Asians are stunted (see pg 184 of Richard Lynn's Race Differences in Intelligence) The average man in India is only 5'5". If Indian height can be so severely stunted by malnutrution, why can't Indian IQ be analogously stunted? "

Most of those IQ tests in India were taken among the prosperous middle class children not the under nourished. Even if the average South Asian IQ were to rise it would hardly come closer to White IQ let alone North East Asian IQ. Only the upper castes like the brahmins and Kayasthas would have IQs in the White-East Asian-Jewish range.

Most of those IQ tests in India were taken among the prosperous middle class children not the under nourished.

Virtually everyone in India is malnourished to some degree. If 62% of the population is stunted (i.e. 2+ SD below expected height for age), then the remaining 38% is not going to be perfectly nourished. As I've said, the average young man in India is only 5'5"; that's 2.14 SD shorter than young white men in America. If malnutrition can stunt height by 2.14 SD, then in theory it can stunt IQ by 2.14 SD which implies that with first world nutrition, India's IQ would be (2.14)(15)+ 82 = 114. Of course that assume that IQ is just as influenced by nutrion as height is which may be wrong.

Most of those IQ tests in India were taken among the prosperous middle class children not the under nourished.

Virtually everyone in India is malnourished to some degree. If 62% of the population is stunted (i.e. 2+ SD below expected height for age), then the remaining 38% is not going to be perfectly nourished.

Have you ever been to India? It is the farthest thing from the egalitarian society you imagine where malnutrition is evenly distributed throughout society.

There is a well-off middle and elite class that not only has first-world nutrition but an army of servants to free them from distractions from study that their family and culture demands. All of these people are taking these exams and suffer no IQ depression.

There is the large underclass that represents the body of India. Some are people so sick and malnurished that they literally die in the street. It can take days for anyone to notice or carry away the body. Many of these have no access to a decent nutrition, education and suffer serious IQ depression. The people suffering the worst deprivation and IQ-depression are not sitting these exams.

The overall effect may be a wash. The artificially high scores resulting from a disproportionate percentage of elite/middle class Indians may cancel out the lower scores from the proportionally underrepresented slighly IQ-depressed classes directly beneath them.

I'd like to see the data on the the exams in question from which IQ scores are extrapolated. The question would be how many are sitting these exams and what proportion of the total potential population the sitting students represent.

If only 20-30% of total potential population is sitting for these exams, it can be assumed that the scores are artificially elevated by cherry picking only the cognitive elites with no nutritional problems.

If it is 40-50%, it might be an accurate assessment of the average with the inflated scores of the cognitive elites somewhat balanced by the slightly depressed scores of the next brightest groups who suffer slight nutritional deficiencies.

If it is 80-90%, then one can expect more sever cases of IQ-depression depress the overall scores.

Does anyone have any idea of what tests were used in India to asses IQ and what percentage of eligible students sit for them?

@Anon, regarding Naipaul and Indian brahminsBrahmins are 5% of India but less than 1% of the Indo-carib diasporaSome brahmins deliberately gave the british agent the surname Maharaj, which is used by many non-brahmins and got past the British recruiting agentHowever, once in the caribbean, they practised endogamy with other brahmins only

http://www.indocaribbeanheritage.com/content/view/26/47/

The Indians came from Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Western Bihar, an area known as Bhojpuri’s Belt-Bhojpuri being a regional dialect of Hindi. Most were farmers, though a few Brahmins also came, even though this was against the policy of the British, who considered the more educated Brahmins as potential trouble makers.

1 out of 19 Indian ( 50% Upper caste, 50% Kulak Peasant ) High School students get into MD1 out of 41 Chinese High School students get into MD1 out of 200 White High School Students get into MD school

Because this has large scale data and uses the entire Med school population and entire high school population, it is not cherry picking data and does not rely on fatness of extreme right tail as for awards. All these awards are in the +4 SD range

The conceptual error you're making is not recognizing that people who are malnourished on one metric (low birth weight) will regress to the mean on another metric (IQ). To make an analogy, if we looked at the adult height of severely unerweight infants, we might find that they only grow up to be a couple inches shorter than average. We would then falsely conclude that severe malnutrition only causes a 2" drop in height, but this would be a major underestimate, as malnutrition is known to stunt height by over 2 SD. The important point is that if malnutrition extremely impairs a population on one biological trait (i.e. height) it is probably doing the same on other biological traits (IQ, birth weight) but that doesn't mean the same individuals are all equally afflicted on all those variables and assuming so can cause us to underestimate the impact.

1 out of 19 Indian ( 50% Upper caste, 50% Kulak Peasant ) High School students get into MD1 out of 41 Chinese High School students get into MD1 out of 200 White High School Students get into MD school

But more Indians apply I assume so these stats might be misleading.

American Indian Average IQ = 138 - 24 = 114

Well the 114 figure at least squares well with my earlier post:

As I've said, the average young man in India is only 5'5"; that's 2.14 SD shorter than young white men in America. If malnutrition can stunt height by 2.14 SD, then in theory it can stunt IQ by 2.14 SD which implies that with first world nutrition, India's IQ would be (2.14)(15)+ 82 = 114.

"Anon, regarding Naipaul and Indian brahminsBrahmins are 5% of India but less than 1% of the Indo-carib diaspora"Fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism_in_South_America“Hinduism in GuyanaAbout 84% of the East Indian immigrants were Hindus, and their dominant sect was the Vaishnavite Hinduism of Bihar and North India. Some 30 percent of the East Indians were from agricultural castes and 31 percent were labourers. Brahmins, the highest caste, constituted 14 percent of the East Indian immigrants.”

In other words brahmins are over represented in the Caribbean (Bramis in India are 5%) and thus the average Indian IQ there is not the floor but may actually be a bit higher than India itself.

Still, education has historically been a weakness among Patels--at least compared to other high-caste Indian emigres, who create the impression that India is a nation of doctors and engineers. "I came on a student visa," Manoj says, waving his hand dismissively. "But the key word is visa, not student. I took a few semesters at Northwestern and then quit to start a business. Patels don't study. Patels just do."

Upper caste Indians aside score over 100 IQ malnourished and all. Lower caste Indians if given nutrition can score in the upper 90's. Lower caste Indians in UK score in upper 90's. IQ tests given in India are at malnourished kida, which represents the average population. Those racists who are asserting such drivel about Lower Caste Indians being inferior to whites should get their heads out of a KKK hat.I guess people forgot the Flynn Effect? Lmao poor anti-semetic charlatans.

Upper caste vs lower caste IQ is nonsense. Caste historically divided Indians into unequal groups with Brahmins being at the top of caste pyramid enjoyed privileges at the cost of other Indians. BTW, Brahmins are not a monolithic community, not a race or an ethnic group. Hindu religion denied access to education to a majority of Indians. However today its a bit better and every community is catching up. With its backward, regressive Hindu culture North India is way behind South India. In South India where anti-caste movements have destroyed the old caste hierarchies and accompanying Brahmin privileges, all castes have shown progress in all walks of life. These days its actually students from the wealthy peasant castes who excel in competitive exams. The silly notion that the Brahmin being better than others is a castiest claim and a myth.

You wrote this several years ago but I'm just reading it now. I have a question;

First you quote the article, "More importantly, both Jews and Indians are used to thinking and acting globally. They also know that they can rely on one another. Far be it from an Indian trader to ask for a receipt when he gives a Jewish colleague a bag of jewels for safekeeping overnight."

Then you link to an article you wrote at American Conservative "Fragmented Future" with the byline "Multiculturalism doesn't make vibrant communities but defensive ones" wherein you qouteHarvard professor Robert D. Putnam as saying,

"In the presence of [ethnic] diversity, we hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us."

Yet the very first quote above disproves that. The Orthodox Jews and Indian Jains look nothing like one another and come from entirely different cultures and religions, yet here they are trusting each other so implicitly that, "They also know that they can rely on one another. Far be it from an Indian trader to ask for a receipt when he gives a Jewish colleague a bag of jewels for safekeeping overnight".

That doesn't sound like "defensiveness" to me.

What says you?

"This all raises questions about what Ibn Khaldun called asabiya. Do other Indians care about the welfare of Jains the way late 19th Century Reform Jews in Germany cared about Oriental and Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman Empire -- enough to start organizing pan-Jewish pressure groups? How much pan-Indian ethnonationalism is there among Indians? Or is India just too big?"

I don't understand. Are Jains being oppressed and persecuted somewhere that Indians need to organize pan-Indian pressure groups to protect them?

I've googled around and find no such indication. Perhaps you can explain the above paragraph?

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